Who here Uses Adobe Pagemaker?

[Felon]

I've been laboring under the assumption that most PDF publishers use some sort of high-end page-layout program to put their publications together, such as Quark Xpress or Adobe Pagemaker. I'm not sure if that's true (you tell me--is it?), but if there's anyone out there using Pagemaker, I'd like to pose a question: how do you usually handle tables?

As far as I know, you basically have a couple of options; the first is to paste the table as a graphic, and the other is to embed it as an OLE object. Adobe intends for the user to perform both of these tasks via their Adobe Table program, but I find it to be a bit of a kludge. It doesn't import tables straight from other word processor formats, and even when convereted to tab or comma-dilineated text, errors abound. Add to that the fact that Adobe Tables itself seems to lack any sort of nice autoformatting templates, and it makes one truly wonder if using Pagemaker for table-heavy publications is even worth the effort.

Am I going about this wrong? Is there another application I should check out? I'd appreciate any advice I can get. Thanks!

 

[Dana_Jorgensen]

Adobe's Tablemaker is the one thing I have never used in Pagemaker for at least three major release versions. Tried it several times, never liked the results. Instead, I built myself a linked table object in a Pagemaker file itself, and I simply copy it over to the working document and adjust the various subobjects in it as required before dropping it behind the text I want in a table.

Working this way, I can maintain my stylistic requirements quite a bit easier, and while it seems like quite a bit of work, I always found it to be easier than cleaning up after the tablemaker. And in the end, I think I produce better results this way, too.

Anyway, I take one of the larger tables I expect to create and format the text in an empty PM document. Do all the font changes, set up the header, an empty box to form the border, create empty boxed with light fills to create the dividing bars every 3-5 lines to make things easier to read, etc. All that extra stuff is created over the text, and all that stuff over the text is selected and linked to form one object. Shuffle it behind the text, reselect the grouped object along with adding the text, and group again, so you only have one object to copy & paste.

This process works well for a lot of other standard features in your documents as well, like graphical chapter headings, image borders, etc. You start with one standard formatted object which you then copy and adjust to meet your needs, rather than rebuilding the object every time you need it. And keeping it in a separate document, it eases the work for maintaining a uniform style in related products as well.

The drop it into the working document wherever you need it, edit the text, unlink the objects, bring the background stuff to the front for any removals or resizing, then regroup it and send it to the back again before regrouping with the table text box.

 

[Felon]

That's a technique I'd considered, but ultimately wasn't comfortable with the high level of detail it involves. Still, the fact that it's worked for someone else for so long is noteworthy. Thanks for the advice.

 

[Dimwhit]

I've been laboring under the assumption that most PDF publishers use some sort of high-end page-layout program to put their publications together, such as Quark Xpress or Adobe Pagemaker. I'm not sure if that's true (you tell me--is it?)

Since you asked...yes. I think most do. Though Adobe InDesign is gaining steam as an option. That's what I use. I've never used Pagemaker, though, so I don't know how they compare.

 

[Fast Learner]

The best way to make tables in Pagemaker, imo, is to spend $299 and upgrade to InDesign. It has an awesome table tool, and Pagemaker is a dead end product, now -- Adobe will never release a new version. The $299 price is an upgrade to InDesign CS -- originally you could upgrade for $99, and it's likely to just keep getting more expensive.

But yeah, $300 is a lot of bucks for a hobby. Without that I'm pretty sure you're stuck with either Tablemaker or the highly manual method, unfortunately.

 

[Dana_Jorgensen]

The best way to make tables in Pagemaker, imo, is to spend $299 and upgrade to InDesign. It has an awesome table tool, and Pagemaker is a dead end product, now -- Adobe will never release a new version. The $299 price is an upgrade to InDesign CS -- originally you could upgrade for $99, and it's likely to just keep getting more expensive.

But yeah, $300 is a lot of bucks for a hobby. Without that I'm pretty sure you're stuck with either Tablemaker or the highly manual method, unfortunately.

Pagemaker is a dead product? Don't trust words like that when they come from adobe. They said the same thing back when they first released InDesign 1.0. But since then, they've done Pagemaker 6.5+, InDesign 1.2, Pagemaker 7, InDesign 2.0, and now they're doing all the CS products. They did have a page up for PageMaker CS at one point, though I have no clue if it's still up, and I'm feeling too lazy and impatient to go check.

 

[Dimwhit]

Pagemaker is a dead product? Don't trust words like that when they come from adobe. They said the same thing back when they first released InDesign 1.0. But since then, they've done Pagemaker 6.5+, InDesign 1.2, Pagemaker 7, InDesign 2.0, and now they're doing all the CS products. They did have a page up for PageMaker CS at one point, though I have no clue if it's still up, and I'm feeling too lazy and impatient to go check.

So as someone who has only used InDesign (well, and Quark), what is the difference between ID and PageMaker?

 

[Flyspeck23]

So as someone who has only used InDesign (well, and Quark), what is the difference between ID and PageMaker?

PageMaker is a throw-your-text-and-graphic-onto-the-page-kinda-layout-prog, if you know what I mean

I personally don't know InDesign, but while Quark is precise, PageMaker is easy. For my taste, PageMaker falls somewhat short on the professional side (that doesn't mean it isn't possible to do a professional looking layout with it, though).


@Felon:
Scribus is a free layout program for Linux. It isn't anything fancy, but hey - it's free

 

[Cergorach]

Pagemaker is a dead product? Don't trust words like that when they come from adobe. They said the same thing back when they first released InDesign 1.0. But since then, they've done Pagemaker 6.5+, InDesign 1.2, Pagemaker 7, InDesign 2.0, and now they're doing all the CS products. They did have a page up for PageMaker CS at one point, though I have no clue if it's still up, and I'm feeling too lazy and impatient to go check.

Actually they didn't, they did say that they eventually wanted to replace Pagemaker functionality with Indesign. ID1.0 was a goood effort but fell short on a couple of major points, ID1.5 was a quickfix to get the major holes fixed, and ID2.0 is a major release that wears the title major well. There won't be a Pagemaker CS or Pagemaker 8, it's counter productive for the 'new' adobe strategy, a single interface and integration. Everything Pagemaker can do, ID can probably do better. There's finally some better plugin support as well, the scripting language for ID is also very powerfull (although i've yet to make anything in it). There's no Pagemaker CS page, nor can i find one in the site's history (searched a couple of search engines), there is a Pagemaker CS upgrade, that basicly upgrades Pagemaker to IDCS. I haven't trie IDCS yet, so i can't comment on any added functionality...

 

[Fast Learner]

Adobe had to wait until InDesign had sufficient market penetration before they dropped Pagemaker. They've reached the threshold.

Quark is indeed more "precise" and "structure" oriented than Pagemaker. InDesign, in my opinion, blends the best of both.